Horror Movie Review: Return of the Tooth Fairy (2020)

Directed by Louisa Warren, 2019’s Tooth Fairy (also known as Toof) was movie we called one of the worst movies of that year. A staggering bad horror where the only thing that stopped it getting the rare 0/10 score was one actor’s performance. You can read our full review here.

One year later, and it’s time for a sequel that absolutely no-one was asking for. Surely, it can’t be as terrible as the first movie was, though? After all, the bar wasn’t exactly high.

Once again directed by Louisa Warren and written by Tom Jolliffe, Return of the Tooth Fairy (aka Tooth Fairy 2/Tooth Fairy 2: The Root of Evil) stars Jake Watkins, Katie McKenna and AJ Blackwell.

Set 20 years after the events of the first film, young Corey (now played by Jake Watkins) is all grown up but still suffering PTSD from the horrific events that occurred in his childhood. The film blurs the lines between reality and fiction early on, it’s unclear if the tooth fairy is back or it’s all in his head.

Corey has issues, the trauma has made it hard for him to develop relationships, so when the opportunity to go to a college reunion at an old farmhouse comes along, he takes it. Unfortunately, for Corey though, one of those people, Paul (AJ Blackwell), has an ulterior motive for getting Corey to come along. Paul’s cousin was killed by the tooth fairy and he thinks Corey was responsible. Especially as Corey was the only survivor of the massacre.

Paul wants the truth and plans to get it out of Corey no matter what. Which also includes raising the tooth fairy with a spell book. As things start to go wrong, people go missing and the bodies pile up, questions start to be asked. Is this all the delusions of a psychotic killer or is the tooth fairy actually real?

The idea that all of this might be nothing more than the murderous rampage of a traumatised individual is a good one. It helps push Return of the Tooth Fairy into more believable territories and keeps you guessing for a lot of its runtime. Return of the Tooth Fairy wants you to question Corey’s mindset, but also to wonder about the people around him. What if, one of them, is the killer and using Corey as their means to an end?

It’s a familiar angle to take and one that Return of the Tooth Fairy does well enough, up until the epilogue. Something that looks to put a more definitive stamp on things and set up for another film in the series (which does exist).

So, on the story front, Return of the Tooth Fairy is an improvement over the original. What is also an improvement is the production values, make-up, and effects. There’s some nice-looking gore and some well-shot sequences here. However, a poor cast threaten to drag the movie into the expected doldrums. Aside from Katie McKenna who does well, there are no performances worth getting excited about here. Everyone is pretty bland, their characters are non-existent and a lot of the dialogue just feels stilted and worn.

It’s these performances that slow down the story and makes it hard to get invested in the character’s plight. Though, that being said Return of the Tooth Fairy is an improvement over the original movie. While it didn’t need to do much to better it, there’s some clear effort to make this a more enjoyable movie and it pays off, for the most part.